After the Incident
by Asfixia
Summary: Matt and Wendy find the book they used to love as kids in the basement. Sorry it's so terrible, I had Writer's Block. Possibly oneshot, for now. First fanfiction. Yay!
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer!**

**I do not own The Haunting in Connecticut. I don't own anything except this computer and this keyboard, which brought this story to youuuuu. =) And and and. All characters & references & junk are copyrighted to the movie and it's creators. So yeah. **

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Matt's P.O.V.

Finally, I was alone in my room; AKA, the basement. Good thing the bathroom was nearby. I felt like I could hurl at any given moment.

_I'm losing my mind...please, god, just make this go away...it's cold down here._

I was having a lot of offhand thoughts lately. Not that I considered it a problem, just another one of those un-me-like side effects that came with whatever the hell else was happening to me. Normally, I wouldn't really care if it was cold; I liked it, that was the end of the story. But now it was starting to get on my nerves...

"Matt?"

I turned toward the stairs. The worried expression I caught sight of must have belonged to Wendy; couldn't really tell, basements aren't the brightest places; mostly because she was the only one that voluntarily crept down here. The rest of the family preferred to stay upstairs.

She moved toward me. "Hey."

I nodded.

"So what happened?"

Her tone was conversational, and I looked down. I'd been hoping to avoid this subject.

"Do you remember that book we used to read when we were little kids? With all the...weird pictures in it?"

Wendy tilted her head.

"The Old Man who wasn't there...I remember as I was walking up the stairs...he wasn't there, he wasn't there...He wasn't there again today..."

"...Oh how I wish he'd go away," the two of us harmonized together.

"Yeah," I smiled, remembering the odd picture that accompanied the poem. "Do you...remember the other one?"

Wendy's eyebrows inched together. "Maybe, which one?"

I took a semi-deep breath. "One bright day in the middle of the night, two dead boys got up to fight; back to back they faced each other, they drew their swords, and they shot each other. The deaf policeman; he heard the noise, and he came and he killed those two dead boys."

There was a pause. The air stirred around us, enhancing the cold, kicking up whatever dust was left of the old room. I casted a sideways glance on the door across from us.

He was there. Jonah's figure watched over us, inanimate.

"Matt," Wendy notified, "You're scaring me."

I didn't take my eyes of that door.

"Join the club."

The silence resumed it's presence.

Until the heavy, loud bang of something colliding with the floor of the basement interrupted once again.

It made both of us jump a little. We looked back, to see what appeared to be a book; or something of that shape, that had fallen off of a shelf. Wendy laughed quietly, as did I, as our sudden jolt of surprise fading.

"I'll get it," Wendy offered, seeing me shift to go get it myself.

I watched as she picked it up. She didn't put it back on the shelf. Instead, she wiped dust away from the cover with her thumb, her eyes clouded with doubt.

"...Wendy?" I asked, coming over to her.

"This - this can't be right." she breathed. Now that I had a better view, I could see what she was looking at. Stamped across the front of the book (Yes, it's a book) was the word "Antigonish."

I narrowed my eyes. The title was all too familiar.

"You...took this with you?" Wendy asked accusingly.

"No. I don't even have a copy of the book...anymore."

I held my hand out. She put the book in it, although with a hint of caution, and I wanted to roll my eyes.

The odd thing was that there was a bookmark; I never bookmarked the things I read, and I didn't even think I owned this book any longer. I opened to the pages it was stuck in between.

_Oh for God's sake._..

Staring out at me was the picture for the 'Two Dead Boys' poem. The one boy I recognized, what with his dark hair and piercing blue eyes.

_What are you trying to tell me?_

Written across the page in red ink, just underneath the picture, was a message in Latin; which, conveniently, I couldn't read.

"Who wrote this?" Wendy questioned once more, tracing along the red ink.

"I don't know. Can't read Latin."

We tried everything, from cluelessly turning the book at different angles (looking to see if there were any more red-ink Latin messages, of course) and guessing random words. Hopeless.

"We should learn a second language." Wendy suggested. Though I could tell she was being sarcastic, it sounded like a good idea at the time.

"Yeah. Or maybe we shouldn't and find someone, or something to help us figure out what this says, and say we did."

"Sounds like a good plan to me."

I looked back at the door again. He was still there. Even though nothing bad had happened in the past minutes, I still didn't want to take a chance. "You should go."

She frowned in disappointment at being kicked out. "Okay, but just - just don't lose that book...okay?"

"I won't."

She nodded, then started for the stairs.

I kept on staring at the Latin. _Where to go...who to ask..._I thought to myself. Then I could get this damn message figured out.

And, just like that, it clicked.

_The Library._

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**So sorry about the shortness. You know how Writer's Block can be sometimes.**

**And I couldn't find the original title of the book they read as kids, cuz i'm lame like that, but if you on the off chance know it, please tell me. ****I still have to add the part 2, where they get the message decoded, and that'll link it back up to the regular events in the movie. Anyways. Hope you liked! =)**


	2. Note

ATTENTION!

I'm really sorry that I haven't updated for so long, it got kind of busy for a while, but I promise I'll be updating it a little more regularly now. Plus the movie is on DVD, making it easier to write. Yay!


	3. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer!**

**I do not own The Haunting in Connecticut. I don't own anything except this computer and this keyboard, which brought this story to youuuuu. =) And and and. All characters & references & junk are copyrighted to the movie and it's creators. So yeah. **

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I'd been skeptical about finding the book in the basement. I'd been skeptical about pretty much everything since the living nightmares started. But one thing I was not so skeptical about, was the fact that these things were real. They happened. No more living in denial for me.

Wendy and I split off in different directions once we had reached the library. She knew books a whole lot better than I did, so for most of the time I just looked around for Latin titles. I found a few; but none proved to be very helpful. It made me wonder if Wendy was having better luck than I was. _I sure hope so_. I eventually gave up on looking and sat down with the book we were investigating. I opened it back up to the same page we'd looked at before, expecting to see the same picture that had popped up at me the last time. Instead, I got a page filled with red Latin, some of it bigger than the rest. As I blinked, it slowly started to fall of the page as if it were…melting? I shook my head, trying to figure out if this was real or not. It continued to melt and run as the red ink blended into one mass in the middle of the page.

"Hey, Matt, I couldn't find anything -," Wendy's calm voice interrupted my staring. She looked at my expression, which hadn't changed since the ink had started shifting on the page. "You okay?"

I looked back at the book. There was only one line of red Latin, under the same picture of the two boys. _So it WAS a hallucination. _"Yeah, just fine…" I answered distantly. "I didn't find anything either."

Wendy frowned. "Here – can I see the book?" She sat down across from me, resting her arms on the solid wood of the table.

I flipped the book around so it was facing her, and slid it across the table. She opened it to the inside cover, and began to flip through it page by page, scanning each section carefully. This was confusing to me. "Looking for something?" I asked quietly. She answered without looking up.

"Any other Latin words or messages written in red ink – mostly a signature, a lot of people sign their books just in case they get lost, or mixed up, so…" She stopped mid-sentence.

"Wendy? Did you find something?" I added her name to the beginning, only because she seemed lost in that book. Like she was completely oblivious to everything and everyone around her. She didn't answer. I leaned across the table, staring intently, hoping she'd look up. I'd noticed an increased amount of staring coming from me lately. This and the offhand thoughts might just be a sign that I've been way out it since we moved, which wouldn't be surprising.

Wendy finally looked up. "Oh...yeah, here, check this out." She adjusted her finger on the page and turned to book towards me. It was too small for me to read, even while squinting.

"What is it?"

"It's a signature." She smiled, then turned the book back in her direction. I still didn't understand.

"How do you know?"

"Well, if you look hard enough, you can see the words 'property of' written in English above the smaller words. So it's either a signature or property of a library."

"Oh." I felt as if my eyesight was failing me, even if the text was to small for the average person to be able to read. "Do you think they'd have a magnifying glass?"

Wendy nodded. She got up and started for one of the bookshelves. As I waited, I put my thumb on the page with the signature to bookmark it, while flipping back to the other page I had been looking at earlier. I tried to figure out what the whole running ink thing meant. When the ink was running, it formed a puddle in the middle of the page...and it was red.

Which looked like blood.

I turned back to the signature page with a mental shudder. I decided to look over the signature again. _Who in the hell can write this small? _I found myself wondering, and the longer I looked at it, the more my eyes started to hurt.

Wendy came back holding a magnifying glass. I grinned. "That was fast."

She returned the smile, then sat back down across from me. I gave her the book.

"Okay...it looks like it says..."

When she stopped, I waited, extending my patience.

"I...still can't read it." Wendy said. She sounded confused. She looked back to me. "Here, see if you can."

_Okay, eyesight, don't fail me now._

Wendy handed me the magnifying glass and slid the book over. However, when I magnified the text, I couldn't make it out. It was as if the signature was immune to magnification. All that came up under the glass was a blur, like an unfocused microscope. "I can't read it either." I admitted in defeat.

"I can read it."

Wendy and I both turned our heads simultaneously.

A man had appeared behind us, his expression impassive. I tend to be suspicious of random people that show up out of nowhere; but at this point, we needed to figure out this signature, and neither of us could read it. So we didn't have much of a choice but to accept his help. Wendy was relieved, I could tell by the way she gestured for the man to sit down. "Yes, please, that'd be great." She said as she moved aside.

The man settled in her place. I gave him the magnifying glass, but he insisted that he didn't need it; said he had experience. _Experience in what? _I thought, though I didn't bother to question him. But I did suggest that he read the red ink on the Two Dead Boys poem first. It just seemed like less of a challenge, and the fact that i'd seen the boy in the picture before made my curiosity for it stronger.

"Hmm...this is odd..." He mumbled to himself. "Yes, yes I see. Oh, my."

I couldn't quite call him crazy, what with how weird i'd been acting lately. But he definately had a different way of doing things.

"This here, reads: 'Trapped within these walls is an army of anger, waiting to be unleashed.'"

Wendy and I exchanged a glance. "Can you read the signature?"

The man nodded. Wendy directed him to the page where the signature was scrawled in tiny letters. He studied it, tilting his head in different angles; It looked as if he were forming a shape.

"This book, would be property of a Mr. Aickman, if my eyes do not deceive me."


End file.
